Searching for Her
by Tattered Tenshi
Summary: I always wondered what it might have been like for the people across the world who wouldn't know Lain personally, but were influenced by her. So I decided to write a possible answer.


Humming out over the Wired, hundreds of thousands of images. Millions of lines of text. In the Wired, you can scream, and it can reach a thousand ears. Or you can scream and have it lost forever.  
  
In the Wired, the only reality is that which is programmed, created, distorted. In the Wired, the programming bleeds out into life until there is no difference at all between one and the other.  
  
It's kind of like The Matrix, only more hellish. It's kind of like Hell, only more digitized.  
  
Which is why I'm here, I suppose, typing futile words in an effort to make some sort of contact. Searching for the girl I can't get out of my head. Searching for the girl.  
  
It started in the book shop, and I swear to you I was looking for a real book, none of this electro-rubbish. Maybe something romantic. Us girls are supposed to love romance, right? Only. only the burly blokes on the covers are enough to make my stomach turn. The girls they show aren't much better, but I can stand to look at them, anyway.  
  
I'm not saying I don't fancy a fellow now and again, but the more I see, the less I really want to see, you know?  
  
It all went downhill when I saw this chit of a girl with a tiny computer in her hand. Downloading books onto the blasted thing. Cheaper than a real book, but not nearly so nice to flip through. I never was interested in them, but this one caught my eye. No, not the computer, nor the title flashing on the screen. The image.  
  
Staring out of the screen like she could see the store was a girl with a pale face, dark eyes and hair- Asian, by the looks of it, though I couldn't tell you where from. And I swear that her eyes moved to gaze at me. Then, slowly, she smiled.  
  
I can't tell you what it was that caught me, other than sheer madness.  
  
I hated computers with a passion, then. Had one of my own for schoolwork, but didn't touch it otherwise.  
  
It only took a couple days to upgrade the thing so that I could search the corners of the Wired world, digging up information. It wasn't easy. Think for a moment what most of the net will bring up if you're searching for a young Asian girl.  
  
But this madness produced in me a diligence that I have never before had. And after time, I began to uncover a vast amount of information floating below the surface. Strange ideas, all tied together somehow. The Knights- computer hackers and anarchists bent on digitizing the world, it seemed. Copland OS and Tachibana laboratories. The KIDS project. A 'God' in the internet. And through all of it, a name on everyone's digital lips. Lain.  
  
I knew it was her, though buggerall if I know how I was so certain. That girl.  
  
It was like she crept into my mind and stayed there. I didn't go out. I missed classes. My physical world was reduced to my tiny flat and the computer screen before my eyes. But the Wired world was growing, and now I was a part of it, twining myself in deep. I felt free, like a child finally returning home.  
  
And somewhere in the Wired, I knew she was calling to me. This girl that had become the center of my existence. Lain.  
  
I'm afraid it's almost too late. So much of what I have to say may not be heard. I ran out of food; stopped eating. I don't think I'm long for this world, but I don't care any more.  
  
What I found out when I dug deeper is that there is divinity in this world long devoid of gods. The computer, the altar we sit suppliant before in work and school and home. the computer is the gateway.  
  
There is a God in the internet, and he is fearsome and glorious. And. there is her. Our Goddess, our savior, and our end. And those of us who have found her crave her presence.  
  
I want to join her, with all my heart and soul. She is a girl, but she is also divine.  
  
.I think I love her.  
  
No, I know I do.  
  
I cannot stay in this shell of life, so I am trusting what I know in my heart. That as my body wastes into nothing in front of this screen, I will go somewhere else. Somewhere less tangible. And then I can be near her.  
  
She is everything to me. 


End file.
